


In Name Only

by keepyourpantsongohan



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Developing Friendships, Drama, Gen, General, Mentions of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepyourpantsongohan/pseuds/keepyourpantsongohan
Summary: “I am no one,” he tells him.The boy shakes his head. “No one is no one,” says the Uchiha. “What’s your name?”“I don’t have one,” he answers.





	In Name Only

He cannot remember his name. He cannot remember his parents either, so it’s possible he was never given one. 

Orochimaru calls him many things.  _Child_ ,  _test subject_ , and ultimately,  _failure_. None are worth committing to memory, but they float there in his mind, like the chemicals injected into his tank.

When he meets Shimura Danzō, he is identified as Kinoe. He learns that there are others labelled like this. Names that are really numbers, that catalogue each operative like a collector’s item. He’s naive enough to be flattered that he is ‘First.’

Not long after he joins Root, he is sent to the academy. It is a strange mission, but his first few years of life were unorthodox, and his fellow operatives have neither the time nor patience to teach him how to read. So he enrolls as an unassuming boy named Kazuki, and learns kata and kanji with the other children. 

He is told to perform no better or worse than his classmates, and he does so, in spite of the fact that each night he and the other operatives practice taijutsu and ninjutsu far above the academy level. 

He makes sure that at least one shuriken goes off-target. He loses one taijutsu match for every one he wins. He doesn’t offer answers in class unless he is prompted. He doesn’t participate in schoolyard rough-housing, because an operative with a mask like a lion has taught him three ways to kill someone his size in the past month.

There is one boy he thinks sees through him. He is an Uchiha, and a prodigy. He is strangely outgoing for a member of his clan, and asks the boy calling himself Kazuki why he holds back during his spars. 

“I don’t,” he replies quietly. “I am performing to the best of my abilities.”

The Uchiha laughs. “Sure you are.”

Kazuki avoids him after that. But he feels the knowing eyes of the Uchiha who smiles too much each time he steps up in front of the class. 

It is only months later when Danzō-sama decides that he has learned enough from the academy. He applies for an early graduation. The chūnin sensei are reluctant to accept, given his age and performance. But Konoha is at war. So they watch him correctly perform each task he is given, and have no choice but to promote him to genin. 

He takes on a string of D-ranks with genin teams that don’t yet have four-man cells. Half the time, they are normal tasks, like helping with crops or painting fences. The other half, he has a second mission, where he gathers intelligence about the families in Konoha. He is told to report on children he thinks might have the skill to become shinobi. He sees a few of them later, wearing porcelain masks underneath Konoha. He wonders if they recognize him. 

As the war grows more desperate, he’s quickly moved up to C-ranks. It is on one of these missions that he takes someone’s life for the first time. He means to restrain, but the bandit struggles with the wire around his neck, only succeeding in pulling it tighter. Eventually, the man goes limp, and doesn’t struggle anymore. He weeps for that man in the evening, and is made to run through his suiton and doton until he doesn’t have the energy to mourn anymore. 

He’s heard whispers in Root about how some of the weaker shinobi are raised in isolation and finally forced to battle to prove their strength. He wonders if it’s better or worse to kill an enemy you recognize. 

Not long after, he is offered a chance to take the chūnin exams. There is a team lacking a third member, and his sensei from the academy recommends him as their replacement. The two girls are wary of taking on a teammate so young, but when he beats them both in a spar, they stop protesting. 

Because of the war, there are only ninja from Konoha at his exam. During the team exercise, he cedes to the leadership of the Hyuga girl. With her eyes and his other teammate’s agility, they easily pass the first round.

The second round is even better. He’s learned the names of his opponents now. He recognizes each person who comes from a clan, because Danzō-sama has had him memorize each family’s unique abilities. He uses this information to his advantage in the one-on-one battle. He outruns a Yamanaka before obscuring his vision with mud of his own making. He takes advantage of the sweat in the arena to make an odorous water jutsu that overwhelms an Inuzuka. For the one opponent he faces that is clanless, he remains out of range until he learns how their fire jutsu functions. 

He is awarded the title of chūnin at the age of six years old. 

The recognition from the village makes him almost wish he were in the regular shinobi ranks. He wonders if Danzō-sama recognizes this, because on his first mission as a chūnin, he is ordered to make Kazuki disappear. He is allowed to join the war effort as a saboteur, and he lets a fellow chūnin see him get caught in an explosion that takes out an enemy fort. The body inside is a shadow clone, but he absorbs the memory of what it feels like to begin to burn alive. 

He doesn’t get to show his face in the village after that. His new face is his porcelain mask, with the markings of a cat. No one bothers to remember the young boy who died in an insignificant territorial dispute. With no clan, friends, or body, there is little chance of that name making it onto the memorial. 

He begins learning mokuton under Danzō-sama’s supervision. It is different than suiton and doton, which use chakra to manipulate elements already natural to the environment. When he uses mokuton, he creates life. He is told that his mokuton is not imbued with unchecked power like the Shodai Hokage. His creations are more precise and methodical, and nowhere near as grand. He thinks they’re beautiful all the same, but he refrains from saying it. Beauty is of no consequence for the roots beneath the great tree of Konohagakure. 

He continues to play a part in the war, but only this time it is almost always in front of people from other villages. He learns to spot the medics from Kumo and Iwa. When they draw close enough to examine the groaning boy wearing their village garb, he pierces their hearts with tendrils of wood. He has learned not to cry for them by now. 

He crosses paths with that Uchiha boy from the academy once more. The boy, unsurprisingly, graduated early as well. He is fighting in the war too, despite how young he is. The Uchiha is more skilled than some people twice his age. He has even begun to earn himself a nickname. Danzō-sama sends him to analyze the boy’s skills. The boy’s eyes blaze red when they meet gazes across the battlefield, and those eyes swirl in a pattern he has never seen before. 

They clash blades without much force. He would not have engaged at all if he hadn’t been caught examining the Uchiha’s battles from the shadows. It is probable that the Uchiha recognizes an ANBU mask from Konoha when he sees one. Using his Root training, he subtly manipulates the terrain to gain enough leverage to fall back. All the while, the red eyes never stop watching, still seeing more than he should. 

“I know you,” says the Uchiha. “Who are you?”

“I am no one,” he tells him. 

The boy shakes his head. By his worn expression, it seems he can no longer be accused of smiling too much. “No one is no one,” the Uchiha replies. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one,” he answers. “But you may call me Mori,” he adds, because that is his code name for this mission. 

“Shisui,” the other offers, though he has already read his name in the briefing. “Who do you fight for?”

“The village,” he says, lowering his weapon. Shisui lowers his weapon too. Mori retreats into the trees, a place where even a teleporter cannot reach him. 

The war ends not long after that. Konoha’s Yellow Flash is named Yondaime Hokage. He knows this man is not what Danzō-sama desires in a leader, but the village is overjoyed at the tentative peace they’ve achieved. He wonders if Konoha’s happiness should also be the happiness of Root. He is not foolish enough to ask anymore. 

Regardless, the contentment does not last long. Barely a year after the end of the war, the Kyūbi is unleashed on Konoha. The Yondaime and his wife lose their lives in battle, and a new jinchūriki is made. He is out of the village on a mission when it happens, but the devastation he witnesses upon his return is unlike anything he has ever seen before. He wonders if his mokuton could be used to help rebuild. He requests books from Danzō-sama on architecture, citing an interest in testing the limits of his kekkei genkai. 

In the days that follow, the Sandaime retakes the seat of Hokage. If Danzō-sama was vexed at the Yondaime’s appointment, at the return of Hiruzen-sama, he is livid. It is not long before he plans an attack. An ANBU of the Sandaime, Kakashi, offers Root an opportunity. The Sandaime will leave the village to visit the feudal lord at his prefecture, confirming his renewed leadership. 

Dozens of Root agents are deployed, but it is he of the mokuton who is given the task to assassinate Hiruzen-sama. He is told to consider his vital position an honour. 

Kakashi may have only been baiting Danzō-sama with his information, because when the operatives descend upon the Sandaime, it is nothing more than than a henge from the very same boy. Kakashi cuts through the Shodai Hokage’s kekkei genkai with a burst of lightning. The infamous chidori is held inches from his heart, and he prepares to die. 

To his surprise, Kakashi does not kill him. The older ANBU asks about the origins of the mokuton, and allows him to go free. He isn’t even asked to give his name, which is ‘Hajime’ for this mission. Though Kakashi’s eyes are mismatched, he thinks they manage to have the same expression Shisui’s did, even through the darkened holes of his mask. He looks tired. 

Even if he was only spared for his mokuton, he can’t help but wonder what kind of person Kakashi is. So he watches. He watches Kakashi put a kunai to the throat of a grinning boy who names him “Rival” before walking away with the same tired look in his eyes.

He sets the thought of Kakashi aside, because he is given a new mission. He is to see to it that Orochimaru of the Sannin is able to make it across the border. As a mark of trust between the Sannin and Danzō-sama, he is allowed to go by his Root code name. It likely doesn’t matter much anyway, if the only Konoha shinobi to know about it will soon become a missing-nin. 

He meets a clan which worships the man who left him to die. The Iburi, like him, live underground, and he muses that Orochimaru must carry some kind of curse. They are enthusiastic enough to help, which will ensure that he completes this mission. 

An Iburi girl grabs him by the hand, and calls him Tenzō. At first, he thinks she somehow misheard his name. But this Yukimi looks at him like she knows him. A clansmen informs him that Tenzō was Yukimi’s brother, and he watches the hope leave her eyes as he stares at her without an ounce of recognition. A sister implies a past, and he has none. Only fleeting images of children in glass tanks.  

The Iburi are not alone for long, however. Perhaps he was too careless in his journey to the checkpoint, because Kakashi arrives at his location within the hour. He watches his one-time saviour writhe as a man corrodes Kakashi’s body from the inside out. 

He cannot bear it. He still doesn’t know what kind of person Kakashi is, but he owes him his life. So he intervenes. He allows himself to speak to Kakashi, once they are alone. It is a mistake. The Iburi listen in, and grow angry at the betrayal. 

When Yukimi helps them make their escape, she calls him Tenzō, but Kakashi calls him Kinoe. He wonders if the other boy picked the name up from the Iburi man’s shouts or their encounter in Root headquarters. 

He doesn’t have much time to think about it, because he is whisked away by Yukimi to the surface. He hopes Kakashi is alright, but it is hard to worry too much while Yukimi drags him from vendor to vendor at a nearby festival. She laughs too loudly, and tries to coax smiles from him. He imagines this is what it would be like to have a sister.

 _“No one is no one,”_ he remembers Uchiha Shisui saying, and he feels tired too. 

For the first time in his life, he nearly forgets about a mission. Yukimi wants to run away, and he finds himself wanting the same. But then Kakashi drops down from the trees and reminds him of their duties. The smiling girl beside him is to be used as bait. 

He asks himself again what kind of person Kakashi is.  _One who puts duty first_ , he thinks. But this girl has given him a name, one that is not a number or a mission alias, and that suddenly feels like it’s more important. 

So he tells Kakashi, “My name is Tenzō,” and runs away, hand-in hand with his sister. 

Kakashi pursues them, and he finds himself in combat against him once more. He knows the other ANBU’s reasons are sound. He loves Konoha, and he believes that Danzō-sama would only send him on this mission if it somehow benefited the village. Yet it is too hard for him to watch another person die for Orochimaru’s sake. He refuses to let this girl abide by the same fate.

He feels like he’s yelling in a glass tank once more, watching children die. 

In the end, neither he nor Kakashi get much of a choice in the matter. Yukimi returns to her village. But Kakashi turns to him, and his eyes don’t look so weary. The older boy announces that they will protect the girl with the same conviction he’d had reminding him of their mission. 

It is a close call. They cannot stop Orochimaru from taking her blood. Her body does not have the strength to last on its own. While Danzō-sama told him many stories involving Orochimaru, when he sees the Sannin’s face, all he sees is a snake. He remembers watching Kakashi as his insides burned, and he thinks the pain in his gut must feel similar. 

She lives, just barely, by the aid of her clan’s remaining chakra and his jutsu. He thinks, if nothing else, Orochimaru owes him this victory. He has been told each day that he has no past or name, but for this one day, he can at least pretend. It is enough for him to return to Root with a smile on his face.

As they part ways, Kakashi informs them that this meeting will be forgotten. For all Kakashi spoke of the mission, his silence is its own declaration. Tenzō (for perhaps that  _is_  his name) doesn’t ask himself what kind of person Kakashi is again that day. He knows enough, for the moment. 

His continues to excel at Root operations. He has a nearly flawless record, from infiltration, to assassinations, to surveillance on the shifting tides of the clans. He is ordered to pay particular attention to the Uchiha and Hyuga, who grow more combative with one another and with the village each day. He imagines that Danzō-sama would prefer they left the village entirely, but they have too much political clout for that. 

He grows, too. He grows tall enough that he might not be so easily singled out among his Root cohorts. His hair falls past his shoulders, and he is told by other operatives that he resembles Hashirama-sama more every day. (Privately, he disagrees. The Shodai Hokage looks brave and fierce in his imagery, like a deity.  _He_  doesn’t look like much at all.) 

His mokuton grows the most. The architecture books finally come of use, because he learns that with enough concentration and chakra, he can make a house rise out of the earth. The first time he does it on a mission, he suspects that even his stone-faced taichō is hiding a smile beneath her Bear mask. 

He still wonders occasionally what it’s like to be a normal shinobi of Konoha. He crosses paths with a genin team as he is returning to Root. He was tasked with the disposal of an Iwa missing-nin who made the mistake of entering the Land of Fire’s borders. He forces himself to stop, because he realizes that this team has encountered a missing-nin of their own. She is from Iwa too, and it occurs to him she might be a comrade of his target. He doesn’t know where their jōnin sensei is, only that these three genin look terrified. One stands slightly ahead of the others, arms outstretched as if he could use them to prevent an attack.

He jumps from the trees and binds the missing-nin with an earth jutsu. She ends her life before he can get any answers out of her. 

The genin are still shaken, but one of them manages to say, “Thank you, ANBU-san.”

He looks at the one who spoke up, and it strikes him that this boy is likely the same age as him. The genin has an almost nervous smile on his face and a scar lining the bridge of his nose that crinkles as his cheeks lift. The boy bows his head slightly in deference. He supposes that the other boy cannot tell how old he is, only that he is ANBU. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says. His voice must give his youth away, because the three look at him in surprise. 

On the way back, he tries not to think about the possibility they would’ve been his teammates if he’d grown up like the other children of Konoha.

He thinks about the idea of teammates again when Danzō-sama orders him to to take Kakashi’s eye. It is a well-known fact in the village that his sharingan was given to him at the behest of a dying Uchiha teammate. It is that knowledge alone which prevents the Uchiha themselves from snatching it out of his socket. 

But that knowledge does not align with the description of Kakashi that Danzō-sama provides. He claims that Kakashi has killed his own comrade. He wonders how a person who twice protected his enemy could’ve possibly harmed a friend. 

It is even more confusing to meet Kakashi again. Kakashi calls him Kinoe with more friendliness than he has ever heard the name said. Danzō-sama hasn’t given him a name for this mission, so he supposes it’s as good a moniker as any, but the familiarity addles him. Kakashi poses a joint mission to investigate Orochimaru’s research, and he hesitates, uncertain if this is the correct route to follow if he intends to remove Kakashi’s eye.

Reluctantly, he agrees.

He plays at inspecting the lab, not so different from the one he sees in all of his earliest memories. As they amble through the rooms, Kakashi asks about his mokuton again. He does not explain, but Kakashi has further words for him anyway. He is told he’s better suited to the Hokage’s ANBU, where it’s possible to see the light. He wonders if Kakashi maintains that opinion when he lunges at him with his kunai a minute later.

The confusion he has been feeling is replaced by something else when Kakashi calls him a friend.  _Anger_ , he thinks belatedly. At whom, he’s not sure. Maybe Kakashi, for not being the person he thought he was, because when Kakashi tells him, “I won’t kill a friend,” that only makes his strikes faster.

He has been a shinobi for eight years. He refuses to believe that his missions were not worth something. That all of the blood on his hands is for nothing. This mission that Danzō-sama has given him must serve a purpose. It must be cutting away the blight that infects the great tree of Konohagakure. 

He finds himself shouting the name he found on a gravestone where Kakashi laid flowers. If even Kakashi would kill this  _Nohara Rin_  for a mission, then how are they any different?

Finally, Kakashi looks angry too. If he has no past, then Kakashi has too much of one. The older boy pins him down and speaks of a friend he could not protect. He thinks of a room of broken glass, and of fifty-nine unmarked graves. Perhaps his anger was not for Kakashi at all. 

His opponent holds the chidori above his heart for the second time. He supposes it’s only fair that Kakashi be the one to kill him, since he was the first to spare his life. 

“Are you a friend of Konoha?” Kakashi asks, above the chirping his lightning. “Or are you a traitor?”

“I am not a traitor,” he says. If he knows nothing else at this moment, he know this. He will die for Konoha, if that is the cost of his mission. 

“Then what are you?”

He offers his Root name, Kinoe, once more. He clings to it, as he clings to this mission that has set him against this boy who calls him ‘friend.’ He is told he will be turned in for questioning, and he submits without a struggle. He wonders which of them sounds more tired now. 

He is tied up by Kakashi’s ropes. There is more to this laboratory, he thinks, but Kakashi refuses to entertain his previous mission until they return. The decision is made for him nevertheless when a creature whose body is made entirely of snakes attacks them. His aversion to the animal has not lessened over the years, and he feels his heart squeeze in panic as the creature tries to swallow him whole.

Kakashi saves him again. Even when it is his own life that has just been threatened, Kakashi will not let him die.  _What kind of person is Kakashi?_  He asks himself for the third time. Before he can settle on an answer, they are forced to run from poison gas flooding the lab. Kakashi cannot make it on his own, so he drags him out, and gives him an antidote that he hopes will work until the Hokage’s ANBU find him. 

He kneels before Danzō-sama and questions the purpose of his mission. Of Root, and its relationship with Konoha. He questions himself, because if he has no past, how can it be that he has friends? He remembers years prior when he briefly even decided he had a name. This transgression proves too much for Danzō, and he is sent into a genjutsu which turns his world black.

When he wakes, he’s staring up at a light. In that light, there is Kakashi, and he thinks he might still be unconscious. But Kakashi stares at him with urgency, and soon they find themselves running through the halls he’d once thought were something like a home. 

He doubts the two of them are any match for Danzō, even with Kakashi’s sharingan. Danzō has one of his own, and years more experience in battle than either of them. As it happens, they do not have to find out, because Hiruzen-sama intervenes before their battle really begins. He is invited to the Hokage’s ANBU with open arms. He looks at Kakashi, and knows what kind of person he is.  _My friend_ , he thinks warmly. 

He walks into the brightness of Hokage’s ANBU barracks, and finds a room full of strangers with curious eyes. He starts to give his name, Kinoe, because it’s the only one he has. But then Kakashi calls him Tenzō, and he feels a jolt in his stomach. It almost feels childish to claim it, but it makes him feel lighter than he has in years. He has name, past, and feeling, all bouncing around his head and heart.

 _“I know you,”_  he hears in his mind.  _“Who are you?”_

 _Tenzō_ , he answers. And he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> A character study of sorts, based on the line in Chapter 285, "In ‘Root’, you have no name. You have no feelings. You have no past. You have no future. There is only the mission." The dialogue in Orochimaru's lab is from the ANBU arc of Naruto Shippuden, in episode 355. The latter half of the story is largely based on that arc. 
> 
> A few fun facts: All of Tenzō's code names are references to Hashirama. Kazuki as a combination of "one" and "tree," Mori as "forest," and Hajime as "beginning." The genin boy that Tenzō meets is supposed to be Iruka. The rarity of occasions where Tenzō refers to himself by anything other than a pronoun is intentional. The dropping of honorifics for Danzō at the end was also intentional.


End file.
